PRESIDENT KENNEDY and my DADDY

The day President Kennedy died I was in my classroom at Saint Nicholas Ukrainian School in Passaic, New Jersey.
 I remember Sister Dennis telling us that the president had been shot.We were sent home early and schools were closed for a few days afterwards.
The next few days as we watched the funeral on tv and saw Oswald killed right before our eyes on live tv, nothing made sense in the country I grew up in and loved.
 As a young girl I loved President Kennedy and all that he stood for. His wife Jackie was a role model for me and I made a huge scrapbook of every photo and article I could find on her.
 This was a day of change and sorrow for me.
  As it as at that time, our neighborhood was dirty and quite a scary place at times and now, with the death of our president, things seemed even drearier.
 That same year in March my Daddy passed away. He was my knight in shining armor and my whole world just crumbled as much as it could for a twelve year old girl.
 My daddy was the one who would tell me its ok and hold me and just let me know everything was all right.
He was the one who lovingly showed me everything I know about loving others and respecting them.
He taught me sports and told me I could do anything a boy could do. He showed me how to do archery and sketch and swim .
He loved science and would talk for hours about the planets,stars and such.
 I could go on about my Dad but I just know that 1962 was a horrible year for me.
 Nothing made sense and God was far too far to be reached,or so He seemed far.
 That was the year I decided to walk far from God, to be uncertain about my future and to be as bad as I could be.
 It was also the year I began to fear everyone around me was going to die or have something bad happen to them.
The world around me was like glass sculptures, waiting to break at a moments notice and I was afraid I was going to be the cause of it all.
 In these days you did not go to a support group. You had no kind pastor to turn to.
 My Mom was in constant mourning and my brother a mess in mourning himself,
 I believe that I decided then to do whatever I pleased, to disobey all the rules I had been taught and to become the opposite of what my parents had hoped I would be.
What a year that was. Where were the disciples of Christ, the ones who could show me Jesus?
 Thirty years later when I met Jesus, I decided I would pray so my children and grandchildren would find Jesus early in life and never feel the way I did at twelve.